Thank you, Asia "Nam Lian Gardens" (72 days to go)

March 20, 2021

Today I spent a lovely day with new friends at Nam Lian Gardens in Diamond Hill, Hong Kong.  This is the garden attached to the Chi Lin Nunnery that I first encountered seven years ago on a service trip and later attended with my family.  Returning here one more time has been on my bucket list.  

This garden is the very definition of nourishment.  Rocks, water, wood, fish, birds all precisely designed to be both beautiful and calming.  (Just what this group of Super Moms were in need of.)  I will let the pictures and video speak for themselves.

Brenda, Natasha, Kelly, Denise, Stacey

Thank you, Asia "Meditation" (73 days to go)

March 19, 2021

I know meditation or mindfulness is everywhere now.  Perhaps if I had never left the US I would still have had experiences with mindful practices, but Asia has been my sandbox to learn in.  

I have experimented with various types of mindfulness the past seven years: mindful eating, forest bathing, mindful walking through a maze, guided meditations, mantras, mindful breathing and mindful movement, and gong baths.  

For about three months on the "Muse" app I listened for birds in my headphones while a gizmo checked my brain waves to see how Zen I was!  (I got fairly good at being Zen, but not as much as LeAnn!)

I have also mindfully floated in a deprivation tank of water chock full of epsom salts - which is to say magnesium and sulfate - which combats stress.  You can choose to lie in the coffin-like tank with or without clothes, with or without light, and with or without the lid closed.  Pretty surreal. 

And now, after trying so many of these, I am finally in a rhythm.  Each weekday morning I spend twelve minutes in silent meditation with a few others in room 617.   This calms and centers my mind for the day, connecting me to the earth, myself, and my Self.  

And then there's the gong. . . but that is another story. 

Thank you, Asia, for introducing me to these practices.

Janet, George, Marty and me - morning meditation group

Thank you, Asia "Jigs" (74 days left)

March 18, 2021

 We adopted Jigs our cat when he was just over a year old.  We lived in Seoul at the time.  And, honestly, Brent was in the US when we suddenly found him.  A military family was leaving and needed to re-home him.  We were going to keep it a secret until Brent arrived back in Seoul after the Chuseok fall break.  However, during a Skype call, Jigs began meowing in the background.  "Is that a cat?" Brent asked?  And, just like that, the cat was out of the bag (ba-dum-bum)!

There is an entire long blog dedicated to the ordeal that was the mission of getting Jigs from Korea to Hong Kong.  In short, it was a long, involved "tail" with twists and turns and far more valleys than peaks.  When all is said and done, Adam and I -and Jigs, of course - find ourselves in HK being accompanied by a government official from the HK airport to the quarantine facility where Jigs would spend four months of his life without us.  He didn't like it much, from what I gathered.  And neither did we.  

And so, he has remained with us for the subsequent seven years until now, at 10 years old, we find ourselves at another crossroads.  In those years he has gained a new friend in Rigby, 

plumped up quite a bit, comforted us through dark moments, slept under the covers on cold nights, and generally provided love and entertainment.  

We shall be sad to see him go to his new family.  But, we are also grateful for his unconditional love and companionship these nine years.  

Thank you, Asia "Money" (75 days left in HK)

March 17, 2021

We didn't quite know when we left the Wisconsin education system that teaching abroad was the best kept secret.  However, once we were in the international teaching system everyone we worked with said the same thing, "I wish I had known about this earlier."  Why was that?

In my experience, working at KIS and HKIS has meant better pay, better benefits, and less stress.  We continue to have great gratitude that our employment has afforded us enough money to travel all over Asia, live well where we are, and save far more money than if we had stayed in Wisconsin as educators.

The lifestyle here has meant no mortgage, no monthly car payments - money in the pocket.  We have had solid health care.  We have had amazing retirement programs.  And we have been provided travel home each summer for our entire family.

Thank you for the abundance that this lifestyle abroad has provided. Thank you, Asia.

Thank you, Asia. "Handling Covid-19" (76 days until Wisconsin)

March 16, 2021

Hong Kong is one of the strictest places to be in the world right now, as far as Covid-19 measures are concerned.  While at times frustrating and inconvenient, by and large I am very grateful for living in Hong Kong during this pandemic.  Yes, our restrictions and self-isolation (and run on toilet paper) started about six weeks earlier than that of the US, but here nothing was politicized.  

I am grateful for the memory of SARS kicking in here; it meant that over 48 hours everyone (except us expats) went from few masks to all masks just. like. that.  Conscious awareness of community needs and greater good meant that being compliant with social distancing and government measures just happened.  Yes, people complained - but they did it.  

Yes, we have had long stretches of school online.  We have had no beaches available since a few weeks into last summer.  We have had almost all forms of recreation closed as well as no dining after 6 pm and no bars open for months and months.  And yes, even now, any resident returning to Hong Kong must self-isolate in government-selected hotel for THREE WEEKS.  But, we also have had .0001 percent of the population get infected and fewer than 200 deaths in the 13 months Covid has been raging in Asia and worldwide (population 7.5 million).

And today I got my first "jab," as the Brits say.  In three weeks I will return for the second.  I got in pretty early in the vaccination process because I am a teacher and they prioritized us quite early.  Thank you, Hong Kong.  

Thank you, Asia "Helpers" (77 days left)

 March 15, 2021

This is Mhel.  She is our domestic helper.  She lives in the room Adam once occupied.  Mhel is like our Alice from the Brady Bunch.  Mhel began working for us in July 2020.  She is amazing.  She cooks dinner for us, sees that fridge is stocked, takes care of Jigs our cat, cleans our flat, does laundry, and runs strange errands for us every now and then (like dropping off our spit when we were in quarantine so we could be tested for Covid-19 as required by the government).  Mhel will be sorely missed when we land back in Wisconsin!  She is a great-grandmother and hails originally from the Philippines but has been living in Hong Kong for decades and working for various HKIS families over that time.  She supports both herself and her family back home.

Mhel is not our first helper.  We had domestic help even in Korea.  There we began with having help cleaning and doing laundry 4 hours per week.  Then 8 hours per week.  When we moved to Hong Kong that pattern continued with other helpers over the years.  Marissa used to find herself comforting Rigby during a storm.  She would finish cleaning our flat and then move to the third floor to clean.  On a stormy day, Rigby would escape our apartment and go find her!

In Hong Kong the helpers often come from the Philippines or Indonesia.  They don't have the same rights as expats, unfortunately.  And far too often there are cases of abuse of these women.  The year we arrived in Hong Kong was the first year the government created a law saying that Sundays off were obligatory.  Before that, many were working 7 days a week with no recourse or rest.  They are also supposed to live with their employers and often with very little space provided.  

I am so very grateful to the women who have helped us keep the household running over these past eleven years, Peach Rose, Say, Marissa, and Mhel!  They are strong, courageous women who give so much of themselves to their own families while giving to our family, too. 

Thank you, Asia "Service Opportunities" (78 days left)

March 14, 2021

Since living in Asia I have engaged in more service than I even understood myself until creating this blog.  It began with KIS students collectively supporting an orphanage in Luang Prabang, Lao.  I organized some fundraisers for "Support Lao Children" for a few years.  And then when we left Korea I continued personally supporting a student, Sommon, to attend law college for four years after he had graduated from the orphanage school. 

A letter from Sommon

Also while in Korea, we first read a book by Jackson Kaguri and then had Jackson come to our school.  He wrote A School for my Village after starting a school in his village in Uganda for all of the children orphaned by AIDS. (See more at the link to Nyaka). Our family's partnership with Nyaka continued even as we moved to Hong Kong and in March 2020 Brent was all set to take an interim trip to Nyaka with HKIS students for one week; unfortunately the pandemic had other ideas.  We would still like to volunteer at Nyaka one day.

My final two years in Korea I worked with my church to teach English to North Korean Refugee Women.  This was a transformative experience that I have written about in a prior blog.  However, it set the stage for some of the service I would do later. 

A similarly powerful day of service was meeting some of the living Comfort Women remaining in Korea.  These were Korean women who were forced to be sex slaves to Japanese occupiers during WWII.  These women were being cared for by an NGO who gathered the ageing women together to be taken care of in community.  A group of us visited with the women and sang songs and ate with them.  Admittedly, they were doing more service for us than we were to them.  Yet it was a powerful and memorable day.  To this day, Japan has not yet fully taken responsibility for these atrocities. 

Once in Hong Kong I found my first few years of Interim weeks to be with the Social Awareness group.  We met with an NGO begun by one of our alumni, "Mother's Choice."  This organization helps care for pregnant young ladies and walks them through creating adoptions plans as needed.  It also provides sex education to schools.  We also worked with the students at the Chi Lin Nunnery School exchanging fun games and stories with 13-17 year old developmentally challenged students.  

Presently, Brent and I sponsor a teacher with the Garuna Foundation by paying her salary for a year.  The Garuna Foundation works in SE Asia and its mission is to "support and encourage the proclamation of grace, mercy, and compassion of Jesus Christ to the people of Thailand and Cambodia and surrounding countries."  (You can learn more here at Garuna.org.) 

While in middle school, Adam was required to do some service.  He chose to work with the Missionaries of Charity in Hong Kong.  The sisters provide a soup kitchen called "Home of Love" in the Sham Shui Po district where there is a high population of homeless.  We returned several times to work with them on Sunday mornings.  I was surprised to learn how many of volunteers were helpers taking their only free day of the week to serve the poor in this way.  Most of the time we helped prep the food, peeling or cutting vegetables. 

And then, in 2018 and 2019, I had the privilege of leading the Children of Kolkata Interim trip with students from HKIS.  I have already written about experiences of volunteering with the Missionaries of Charity there.  It was extraordinary and transformative.  Additionally, our school has had long-standing relationships with two other organizations, Future Hope and Anondo Trust.  The Future Hope organization houses and educates slum children and street children from Kolkata. (You can learn more here at futurehope.net) Set up in 2006, Anondo Trust is a registered charitable trust working with disadvantaged children in Kolkata, West Bengal.  

Future Hope and HKIS kids played on the Meidan for hours

Our 2018 Children of Kolkata Interim group

Finally, also in April 2018, just a month after completing my interim trip to Kolkata, I volunteered with my Church of All Nations group to go to Cambodia where we worked with Concordia Welfare and Education Foundation (CWEF).  With CWEF's help, we worked with school children at Bos Plu, this time teaching a bit of English and connecting with them through play.  More importantly, we brought education about the importance of drinking clean water and hand washing using a puppet show.  I have a full blog post from that time you are welcome to read.  (You can learn more about CWEF here.)

At the pastor's house with so many children.  So dusty.

At the Bos Plu school, the school building in the background

What's next?  I don't know.  But I trust I will continue to find ways to serve my community and world.